This morning I was on a space mission. My second one. The town consisted of market tents, street sellers. I went to look at a wig, but they were all black hair, black hats, dreadlocks and I knew they would clash on my white skin. But I tried one on, looked in the mirror and became a beautiful black woman. Radiant. Setting, warm skin.
It was the end of civilization or the beginning. There was poverty, darkness. Everyone lived in the streets, in cloth huts held up with sticks. Either it was night or there was never sun. And my job was on a ship or a plane. A beefy, metal, bolted silver monster. It was my job to accomplish something. Mine and one other person – I think a woman. This was her first time on the ship, her first mission. I had the feeling of being shot in to space. Suddenly without gravity, nauseous. But I sat in my seat next to a long tube of what looked to like hubcaps all stacked together on their sides. Hubcap, bolts, cloth. My job was to layer these wheels, these industrial puzzles. Hubcap, bolts, cloth. I was halfway through when I realized I’d forgotten the bolts on all of them. To de-weave all my work required patience, remembrance of the cloth, the bolts, the hubcaps. Each one fit together. It was destruction to make the unit stronger.
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